Budgeting

Election and Your Money

Given millennials are the most important voting block of this election, it makes sense that you would want to know how is this going to affect your wallet. More importantly, are you going to wake up on Wednesday morning and have a lot less money in your investment accounts? It’s one thing to not have the candidate that you want elected….it’s another thing to lose money.

First things first, I want to encourage you not to panic. Panic is literally what sends the stock market plummeting, and you know better than to panic. However, it’s important to understand a few things about how this election will impact your money.

On this Podcast Episode

I’m chatting with CEO and Founder, Jane Barratt, from GoldBean(you know the great company that helps you invest and buy stocks that you know and love), and Andrew Thomas, Investment Advisor at Blooom (the company that helps you manage your 401(k) without pie charts and crazy line graphs. We’ll discuss:

Should you be worried about your investments with this election

What are some general trends that millennials should pay attention to

Why now might be the best time to start investing

and a ton more wisdom from these two superstars

I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t tell you what the future holds. What I can tell you is that the stock market ebbs and flows. It comes and it goes. What seems like the end of the world today, turns a corner tomorrow and the stock market rallies. You will survive this election.

If you’re new to investing, or never bothered, I highly suggest reading up on the stock market and getting educated. Both Blooom and GoldBean have awesome educational resources and team armed and ready to give you insights. Don’t try to go at this investing thing by yourself.

Budgets Do Work

Podcast listener, Marie, woke up one morning and decided that it was time to give this budgeting thing a try. She buckled down, analyzed her bank statements, and was shocked at how much money she was spending on eating out. (Yah, it’s actually a common big expense for most people).

You see, she had been dreaming of a trip to Iceland, but had no idea how to achieve it. Wouldn’t you know it, all along she had the money just sitting in her bank account waiting for her to find it.

It’s In Your Bank Account

Once she came up with a game plan to cut her expenses, Marie was able to afford her dream trip in less than a year. Oh, and she didn’t just go to Iceland for a few days. She went to Iceland for a whole two weeks!

In this Podcast Episode

Learn how Marie implemented a few changes so that she could save HUGE bucks each month

Find out how awesome her trip to Iceland really was

What goals are on tap next, and her advice to other budgeting skeptics

Budgeting doesn’t have to be hard, and that’s coming from me as both the money expert, and an everyday person just like you. I really don’t like to budget each month. I kind of do it with a bit of an attitude, if I’m honest.

BUT, and this is a big one, I know how important budgeting is to my entire financial future. Budgeting is how I’m going to be able to achieve all the dreams and goals that I want to….and I’ve got some big ones to achieve.

Hang in there if budgeting is hard for you. Keep working at it and I promise you will see the difference in your wallet, and in your life, very soon.

Don’t forget to leave review of Millennial Money in iTunes if you like this episode. It means a lot to me, and can’t thank you enough for listening. Now, let’s go out there an slay some budgets.

One of the most common questions I get asked is, “Am I making the right money moves for my age?” It makes me super happy that you are thinking about that and worried about it. I’ll be honest, when I was in my early 20’s, I wasn’t thinking about “am I making the right money moves.”

Why is my budget always failing? That’s the #1 question I’m always asked, and I can usually answer it once I know the answer to the following question, “Do you know your numbers?”

To which you might reply, “My numbers, what do you mean?”

Exactly!

Knowing your numbers is the #1 way to fix your budget, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. It is the most hated step in the budgeting process because it takes the most amount of time. Sure, you can simply this process, which I’ll talk about later, but to get the ball rolling, you’ve got to be willing to roll up your sleeve and get down and dirty with your spending. (more…)

They are the backbone to your budget and provide the GPS system for your financial future.

The problem is that most people set financial goals and never achieve them..and wonder why they can never get ahead financially.

It’s because you need a freakin’ system for success!

You would never set out to run a marathon without a game plan in place. You don’t just magically run 26.2 miles (and survive). You need to know when to train, how much to train and so on. Your goal is the date you will run the race, but the game plan (system) is all of the details for how you are going to achieve that goal.

2016 is the perfect time to get your goals together and create a system to achieve each one of them.

*If you want to travel…great… you need a system.
*If you want to pay off debt…great…you need a system.
*If you want to buy a house…great…you need a system.
*If you want to move abroad…great…you need a system.
Take a listen to this podcast where I talk about how to get your system in place so 2016 will be your best financial year yet!

PS- I’m launching a FREE e-course on How to Build a Better Budget on January 4th. Sign up below so you can once and for all figure out how to do this budget thing (shhh, don’t tell anyone, but it’s the secret to your financial success each month and I’m going to tell you how to do it.)

Whether you like sports or not, you know that before each game the team has a game plan for how they will win. I want you to think of your finances the same way. We need a money game plan, an action plan and goals that we are trying to achieve to keep us on track. Otherwise, most of us feel like we are just shooting in the dark, and this stuff is hard. Even if you are in a great money situation, I’m sure that there are a few things that trip you up, or maybe that you aren’t paying enough attention to.

This is the 8 step money game plan that I came up with years ago to keep me focused at the start of each month. I use it month after month and wanted to share it with you. It’s helped a lot of my clients as well take “control” of their money and make some positive changes. (more…)